Last Minute Apple Tablet Release Predictions

January 27th, 2010 by: Technabob

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So with Apple’s impending release announcement of the iPad/iSlate/iTablet – whatever it’s called, I thought I’d take a gamble on what I think are the highest likelihood features, specs and pricing we’ll see from Apple later today.

While much of what I’ll lay out here is speculation on my part, it’s all grounded in various reports, leaks and industry insiders that I’ve been gathering over the last few weeks and months. So without further ado, here goes nothing.

I predict that the almighty Apple Tablet will….

1. include a 10.1-inch rectangular LED-backlit LCD display (2nd runner up: a Pixel Qi display)
2. look a whole lot like the picture above – clean lines, extremely thin (8 to 9 mm), but with the addition of a single home button like the iPhone
3. be the same proportions as a sheet of paper for ease of magazine or book reading, so 16×9 movies will have black bars at top and bottom
4. offer both multitouch capabilities as well as a new gesture-based interface that lets you interact with the display without even touching it
5. have mulitouch sensors on the back of the display, similar to the tech in the Mighty Mouse
6. run on an ARM Cortex CPU, with a nVidia Tegra graphics chip
7. run on a new version of the iPhone OS, renamed iOS – capable of running all iPod Touch apps, but it won’t make phone calls
8. have all of the same motion sensor and accelerometer tech the iPhone has
9. be capable of playing near HD quality video (probably 720p resolution)
10. have a full desktop-quality version of the iTunes store built-in
11. have a front-facing camera for video chat
12. will include 802.11N wireless networking, but optional 3G connectivity for major cell carriers
13. offer no user-expandable memory or battery
14. include Microsoft Bing as its default search engine
15. base model will sell for $499 (USD) with a 2-year Verizon or AT&T contract for data access, $799 without subsidy
16. come in both a 32GB version ($499/$799 USD) or a 64GB version ($699/$999 USD) – both will use SSD memory
17. will release in late March 2010 (my guess: March 24th)
18. be called the iPad
19. long-shot: offer tactile feedback with its on-screen virtual keyboard
20. long-shot: include a wireless base station for loading personal media from cameras
21. long-shot: include wireless HDMI for streaming HD video directly to your television

All will be revealed this afternoon, so check back later and we’ll see how close my predictions turn out.

Feel free to speculate with your own thoughts below…